Call for papers for the 2016 Royal Geographical Society (with IBG),  
London, 30 August ? 2 September 2016

Performing Politics: Space, Affect and Practice

Conveners: 	Caleb Johnston, University of Edinburgh
                 Amanda Rogers, Swansea University

We are looking for papers working at the nexus between performance and  
politics. This exchange continues to generate considerable interest  
across the social sciences, arts and humanities as performance has  
been identified as a substantive means for enacting ?new? emotional,  
affective and political terrains. In creating these terrains  
performance may be used in various ways: as an emancipatory space in  
which it?s possible to ?redistribute the senses? (Rancière 2004); as a  
space of hope and communal feeling through which to imagine a better  
world (Dolan 2005); as a weapon of class or collective struggle (Boal  
1979); or as a space of ?abeyance? in which politics happens as a  
?soft impasse? or movement between and through persons (Berlant 2011).  
However, whilst performance can re-create political spaces,  
aesthetics, and identities, it may also buttress existing social and  
political orders such as the nation-state, creating complex  
negotiations that are played out across different sites of activity  
(Breed 2014; Jeffrey 2012). In this session we are interested in  
leaving the relationship between performance and politics open ended,  
but are mindful of the limits, as well as the capacities, that the  
performing arts bring to opening up spaces of political praxis, and  
thus for the emergence of new solidarities, attachments, and forms of  
intimate and vulnerable politics (Butler 2015).

The session welcomes work from academics and artists of an  
exploratory, theoretical or experimental nature. Submissions could  
include conventional papers, performative writings, and/or  
demonstrations of artistic work. Possible themes could address but are  
no means limited to the following:

?	Intimate spaces
?	Testimony and witnessing
?	Transgressive border crossings
?	Performance and identity
?	Performance and geopolitics
?	Performance as public culture
?	Politics, assembly and performativity
?	Performing precarious life
?	Utopian performativities
?	The drama of politics and the politics of drama

Please email abstracts (250 words max) with full contact details to  
Caleb Johnston [log in to unmask] and Amanda Rogers  
[log in to unmask] no later than 29th January 2016.

For further details about the conference, including registration  
dates/fees and the full list of sessions, please see:  
http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+International+Conference+2016.htm

References

Berlant, Lauren. (2011) Cruel Optimism. London: Duke University Press.

Boal, Augusto. (1979) Theater of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press.

Breed, Ananda (2014) Performing the Nation: Genocide, justice and  
reconciliation. Chicago: Seagull.

Butler, Judith (2015) Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly.  
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dolan, Jill. (2005) Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the  
Theatre. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Jeffrey, Alex (2012) The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance  
and Agency in Dayton Bosnia. London: Wiley-Blackwell.

Rancière, Jacques. (2004) The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution  
of the Sensible. London: Continuum.


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